OpenAI fought dirty on career-making math problem

108

jjonbaer about 3 hours ago 16 commentsRead Article on techcrunch.com

DE version is available. Content is displayed in original English for accuracy.

⚡ Community Insights

Discussion Sentiment

43% Positive

Analyzed from 1109 words in the discussion.

Discussion (16 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

cmiles8•about 2 hours ago

OpenAI has a lot of explaining to do here.

The “least worst” representation of the course of events is that their researchers are just jerks, and not behaving in a manner that’s considered acceptable in the research community.

Other alleged scenarios just go downhill from there.

jdm2212•about 1 hour ago

It is worth actually reading OpenAI's response, which is basically that they were trying to see if their models could do what Anthropic had already done, and were surprised to discover that (a) Anthropic had not done it at all, and (b) in fact no one else had done it yet. And then they didn't want to give an Anthropic employee coauthor credit for work that OpenAI had done, which idk seems pretty fair?

johnnyApplePRNG•about 1 hour ago

>were surprised to discover that (a) Anthropic had not done it at all

They were surprised another competitor had not wastefully thrown $20 million+ worth of compute at a problem they had no business solving in the first place?

That's reaching, imho.

gorgolo•about 1 hour ago

Why is it wasteful to solve one of the most famous problems in modern mathematics? And why would one particular company have no business solving it in the first place?

jdm2212•about 1 hour ago

Why shouldn't they advance math research and test the limits of their models?

cmiles8•39 minutes ago

Their explanation doesn’t help much and there are a few things working against them:

1. This is not the first time they have done these “hey guys check out this breakthrough!” announcements where others quickly came along and say “hey, not so fast.” (Eg Erdos) So, specifically in maths their reputation is not good.

2. They’re blurring the lines between commercial cutthroat developments and the gentlemen’s code of sorts re what’s acceptable in academic research. They were working from material non-public insights into other research, which is why they even tried to poke at this in the way they did. Doing that without collaborating first was a pretty jerk move no mater how you slice it.

3. There’s still lots of open questions about how novel the solution was and the timing here where this “test” only happened after other researchers say they fed OpenAI models at least part of the solution is a little too convenient to gloss over. OpenAI statements here to date on the matter have been rather fuzzy.

All that combined with OpenAI’s less than stellar reputation on ethics is why folks are reacting the way they are right now.

jdm2212•31 minutes ago

RE item 2 -- in lab science, it is entirely normal to have competitive-verging-on-adversarial relationships between labs racing to get results first. Mathematicians apparently need to get used to the idea that math is a lab science now.

And that is a good thing! Competition moves us forward much faster than sitting on results to avoid hurting someone's feelings.

biophysboy•about 1 hour ago

https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/117237320796901560

Terrence Tao recently published an interesting take that zooms out from the details of the Navier Stokes drama.

Its an interesting observation he makes, because it is not dissimilar from the relatively common phenomenon of one academic lab getting scooped by another lab (usually by coincidence).

evilturnip•20 minutes ago

This is interesting. He seems to imply that the AI will just provide the solution. He's concerned that the process of getting to that solution is the important bit. But I can see two versions of "process".

A.) The actual steps of the proof, which I assume the AI would provide. B.) People, while working toward a solution, finding novel properties/methods along the way that open new avenues of research + new open problems.

Does B.) actually happen? Would knowing the solution to a problem stymie the process of finding new open questions? I would assume finding a solution may unlock other problems too. So maybe on balance it's not really bad?

I guess in the end, I'm just making the obvious case "the future is uncertain in the face of AI".

biophysboy•16 minutes ago

Well the argument is that B is no longer sustainable because of the scenario you describe in A. If you do a bunch of work on Navier Stokes but then OpenAI gets all the press, then what was the point?

moregrist•29 minutes ago

> one academic lab getting scooped by another lab (usually by coincidence).

I was with you up to “usually by coincidence”.

There’s a long and sordid history in areas of chemistry and areas of biology of holding up a competing paper in review so you can scoop them. I’m sure it exists in physics as well. Certainly biophysics, but probably most subfields.

Often it’s a famous labs that can steamroll review or even just dump the work into PNAS as a “member contribution.”

At least one author of a famous inorganic chemistry textbook was rumored to do this routinely.

And I know of at least one National Academy member who swore off arxiv prepublication after getting scooped.

None of this makes it all right. But plagiarism and academic theft is old and definitely not always accidental.

biophysboy•20 minutes ago

I know this happens, but my impression during my phd was that many labs use popular methods to test popular questions, leading to a lot of simultaneous work. You see this in history as well.

dumberquestions•about 1 hour ago

The most sympathetic interpretation possible of the events for OAI is that they learned two mathematicians were closing in on a solution and decided to throw all of their weight behind getting there first, which honestly still doesn’t paint them in a particularly positive light.

jdm2212•about 1 hour ago

The most sympathetic interpretation is just what OpenAI actually claims: they thought the other guys already got there, wanted to see if OpenAI could do it too, and were surprised to discover the other guys hadn't gotten there yet.

space_fountain•22 minutes ago

Spending tens of millions is a lot to see if you could get there too? I realize the internal price is measured in opportunity cost rather than dollars, but still a bit surprising to see

DrewADesign•39 minutes ago

I don’t have a dog in this fight, but it sounds a bit “I was just punching the air— it’s not my fault someone was in the way.” It’s not like it’s impossible, but it doesn’t immediately pass my smell test. I’ll wait until someone close enough to be knowledgeable but has a lesser stake weighs in.

tmsh•about 1 hour ago

Even through the lack of ethics here and there and mistakes - I think the major headline is that talented people are collaborating with AI to achieve impressive results. It’s shrouded in competitive mistakes of judgment. But it’s an existence proof for collaborating with AI and achieving incredible things.

dist-epoch•about 1 hour ago

OpenAI says they just pointed the AI at the problem:

> Regarding the level of human involvement on our end: although a group of people was involved in our efforts, we collectively had no research-level expertise in fluid dynamics and the Navier-Stokes problem, and therefore were unable to meaningfully contribute to the mathematical content.

https://x.com/SebastienBubeck/status/2097379415747342689

nairboon•about 2 hours ago

Statement from Tristan: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49605915

Statement from OpenAI: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49613262

cwillu•about 2 hours ago

Who on earth reads 2 pages of an all-text article, and decides at that point “you know what, I want to watch a video; oh good, here is the article in video form, just when I needed it!”?

esseph•about 1 hour ago

Me?

I can read the 2 pages in ~30s or so. How long is the video? 15m? Nah.

Edit: video is 37 minutes

sublinear•about 1 hour ago

> It is not the direction one arrives at in a few days by giving a model the problem statement.

Such a satisfying quote.

spockz•about 1 hour ago

See also https://x.com/roelof_vandijk/status/2097219223470629038 So sad that the thread on OpenAI claiming to have solved it first gets so much attention while the posts of Tristan get snowed under.

machina_ex_deus•about 1 hour ago

Beware everyone working on ground breaking research, keep your research secret from openAI or they might spend 22$ million worth of tokens just to beat you to the finish line, while possibly abusing your user data for training.

EA-3167•about 1 hour ago

Shocking, I really expected more from the "totally legitimate startup" planning a $2 trillion IPO with their bottomless money pit. I genuinely assumed that the company credibly accused of stealing from Apple in the most ham-fised way possible would have some kind of guiding ethical principles. At the very least the paragon of decency that is Sam Altman would have stopped this.

Get ready, bag-holders on index-tracking funds... you're about to lose your shirts.

9864325789976•about 1 hour ago

What index tracking funds will cause investors to lose their shirts?

I can't wait to see your short position that will make you rich enough to retire.

EA-3167•34 minutes ago

You don't remember SpaceX fighting to get fast-tracked on the S&P? Well you are only a day old I suppose.